I was a Master.
To understand me, you must understand my past.
My father was a Master. My mother his Courtesan. I was raised in a business that trained women to become whores for the men that owned them. I was taught to train with a strict hand...but to seduce with a kind heart. Although my mother was one of those golden whores, the women broken and rebuilt to become everything their owner could desire, my mother - in her wisdom and beauty - trapped the heart of her Master.
Through her perseverance, she never let the man go. Naturally, I followed in his footsteps, not once finding love, but almost gaining a son.
My heart was destroyed on a clear summer day when my child was stripped from my hands. Redemption for my crimes was lost, and loneliness like a man should never know was gained. Until I found Seraphina... She thought she could deny me.
She thought she could choose her fate or determine the course her life would run. With a shattered heart and rebellious mind, she believed her life was broken.
She chose death as an avenue to escape the life she was given, and she believed there was nobody who could stand in her way.
As her Master, it was my duty to show her... ...that all her beliefs were wrong.
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God doesn't know me.
Or maybe he did at some point, but decided in all his omniscient glory that I wasn't worth his concern or his time.
I'm sure it's my fault. I wasn't the best person growing up. Perhaps this is punishment for all the crazy nights, for the drugs and the stealing, for the child I left behind.
Being born into the seat of luxury doesn't adequately prepare you for the nightmare of life. Handed everything on a silver platter, I learned that doors would open for me with a bright smile, that gifts would be lavished if I played the part of a good sister and daughter. I was a professional of deception, using light to brighten the world around me in hopes of distracting people away from the truth buried in shadow.
How long has it been since my life was stolen away? How many days have I been wandering through the cruelty and horror of that which he made me become? An attractive face and a kind smile had been all he needed to force me to crawl.
I wasn't even worth keeping in the end.
Reduced to currency, I've been swapped and traded, my legs spreading for strangers just to get my next fix. Their violence has left marks on my body, stains on my thoughts, and horrid scars on my soul that will never heal.
Giving up becomes easy when there's nothing left to want.
Walking along a busy highway, I ignored the cars that honked, the stones flying up from beneath their tires to beat me where I walked on the shoulder of the road. I couldn't tell you what day it was or even the time - couldn't tell you for sure what year it was when I escaped that bitter hole.
My mother used to tell me that God walked beside me at all times. She swore that angels looked down to protect me from the monsters that haunted my life. I believed her when I was too young to understand that, in truth, I'd been deserted.
Now, on a trash littered road in a nameless town I didn't recognize, I walked alone.
You would think that taking away one or two things would be enough. But that's not how my story goes. Bitterness assaulted me as I thought about the small moments of fleeting happiness that were offered up only to be stripped away, laughter coming in to fill those quiet moments when I was lost in the dark.
His name is a distant memory, his face an image I can see only when my body allows me to dream. Helpless and so sweet, I abandoned him much like God has abandoned me, and I wonder if he ever found his way.
I am loss. I am death. I am destruction. I am everything he created me to be.
I am all the horrible crimes the world is warned about on the nightly news. But despite the fists that have rained down their savage pain on me, despite the bodies that rocked against me while laughing, despite the identity that was stripped from me by the cruelty of charm and beauty, I managed to survive.
Not for long. It's only my body that navigates this twisted world. My soul is too shredded to fill me with light. My heart has been broken far too completely to ever be whole again. Not even my name is recognizable to me anymore. Not that it's been used that often since I was taken away. I have other names now, words with little meaning, insults that I was forced to swallow with pride.
A car honked as I tripped over my feet to fall to the ground. Washed with dirt and debris kicked up by the swerving tires, something hit my back as a man screamed, "Watch where you're walking."
Never mind the fact that they were the ones to almost plow into me, it must be my fault for existing, for daring to breathe so close to their space. It would have been merciful for that car to give me a tap, for it to send my body flying so I didn't have to make the choice of how I would die.
I laughed while picking out the stones embedded in my palms. God couldn't even give me that. I guess it only proves how alone I truly am; in spirit, in life and in death. They say you're born alone and you die alone, I just never realized that the loneliness also occurred during the in-between parts.
None of it matters. It never did. Not to me, at least.
Another spray of dirt wrapped me in its noxious cloud. My eyes stung as my tears attempted to clean them, my nose ran black from the dust and decay I breathed in. There has to be some way out of this maze I've been running for too damn long.
Forcing myself up to my feet, I stumbled a few more steps. Another car passed by, another cloud of dust kicked up. How many people drove past me that took one look at the wreckage and determined I wasn't good enough to be helped?
My bare feet were torn apart by broken glass and jagged concrete. My shirt was torn and threadbare, my shorts dirty and stained, my white robe covered in the blood leaking from my wounds. A blanket of oily hair trailed down my back, tangled with twigs, blood, spit and debris.
He'd promised me I was beautiful. He'd sworn I'd be pampered and desired. But just like every other man that felt he had the right to touch me with cruel, deceptive hands, he'd lied when speaking softly.
Turning off into a barren landscape, I peered out at a bridge that stretched across a large, open crater. Its lights beamed in white, reds and greens. Its structure far stronger than me. I wished I could stretch to completely cover the crater that had once held my heart.
But the fight left me bitter and jaded. Reality had done well in its efforts to tear me apart.
Breath rattled out from my burning lungs. I coughed to relieve the pressure. A smart woman would have sought out a doctor, but there wasn't anything left for me here.
I wanted to crawl towards the unknown, but I refused to lower myself down.
Life has a way of forcing a person to their knees, and after years spent looking up into the faces of those monsters, I couldn't bear to put myself there on my own.
Crawling was no longer an option. It was time for me to take control. A smile stretched my chapped and broken lips, the wind whipping in to burn the fissures in my skin that were open and bleeding. I may have been held and beaten, mocked and scorned, used and pushed aside, but
I was stronger and smarter than them.
The wind was howling beneath me, singing my name as it taunted me forward just a few more steps.
What will it be, Seraphina? Do you fight for your life or give in? Closing my eyes, I stretched my arms out to my sides, embracing the world that never wanted me. I flew high despite my feet being planted firmly on the ground. Despite the way the wind continued taunting me,
I wouldn't let the words knock me down. I own myself. I make my own choices now.
My death will occur as I decide it, because I'm all I have left in the end.